Crazy Monkey Slot

Crazy Monkey is a slot game from casino developer Igrosoft. Comprising five reels and nine paylines, the title is an old-fashioned video slot that should be familiar to many long-time players, having been around since the days of the Soviet Union. The game comprises wild symbols, solid pay-outs and bonus games. Promising a jackpot of 5,000 coins, it’s certainly worth a gander.

Crazy Monkey, as the name suggests, follows the exploits of a wild-eyed monkey, who follows rivers of genetic code to do as monkeys do: namely gather bananas and shinny up trees. Needless to say, the Crazy Monkey symbol is the hero of the game and thus its highest-paying symbol. More on the pay-table later, though. For now, let’s take a look at the visuals…

Cheap and Cheerful

One would hazard a guess that the budget of Crazy Monkey wasn’t eye-watering. The design is on the simple side, with bright colours, simply sketched icons and rather basic animations. The reels appear against the backdrop of a sort of jungle. Certainly there’s grass, and the odd flower poking out of the side of the screen. What’s more, a monkey appears below the reels, grinning, rolling his eyes and flailing a banana. It’s hardly the most visually stimulating tableaux, but we’ve seen worse games hit the market. Ultimately, what happens on the reels is what counts.

Along the bottom of the screen, you’ll find all the usual buttons: you can choose to play one, three, five, seven or nine pay-lines. This is also where you’ll find the Bet, Exit, Help and Start buttons. Unfortunately, Crazy Monkey does not include an Autoplay function.

In the game, you can stake a minimum/maximum of one coin per line. The minimum coin value is one, the maximum is 25. Thus, you bet anywhere between one and 225 credits on each spin of the reels. To increase the wager on each line, simply adjust the values using the Bet button.

Monkey Business

The symbols in Crazy Monkey include items you’d find in any tropical forest. There are bananas, pineapples, lions, butterflies, monkeys (obviously), snakes and…er…anvils. OK, you might not find an anvil in a tropical forest but it’s by the by, really: we’re in a slot game, not a tropical forest.

The game’s wild symbol is the golden skull. It can substitute for all other symbols (except the monkey) to form winning combinations. It’s also a pretty high-paying symbol in its own right. If you hit five of these on an active pay-line, you’ll claim 2,000. Four pays 500 and three yields a tonne. Five crazy monkey icons, meanwhile, pays 5,000 for five and 1,000 for four. Five lions grants 500, five pineapples 200. The pay-outs fall rather steeply thereafter.

Bonus Game

Crazy Monkey, as stated, includes a bonus game. All you need to do is land three monkey symbols anywhere on the reels. The bonus game actually comprises two separate parts. In part one, the player must help the monkey pull ropes. Some of these ropes are connected to bananas, while others are connected to anvils. If the anvil should fall on the head of a monkey as it lopes across the forest floor, the bonus round will expire (along with, presumably, the poor monkey). It is, however, possible to pass into round two if you manage to scoop up all the bananas. In the second phase, you’ll be shown two boxes, each stamped with a question mark. A significant monetary prize is concealed within one of them; it’s up to you to guess which.

Risk vs Reward

Similar to a great many slot games, Crazy Monkey offers gamers a chance to double their money by winning a simple 50/50 guessing game. All those who enjoy a win in the main game get the opportunity to double up. Of course, once you get to the risk screen, you can always back out; but if you begin to play, you’re just gonna have to abide by what those cards say.

In the risk game, you must choose one of four concealed playing cards. If your card is higher than the dealer’s, your pay doubles. If your card is equal to the dealer’s it’ll stay the same, and if it’s lower, you’ll lose your win.

Monkeying Around

Crazy Monkey is a solid, if unspectacular, video slot. Some people prefer titles with more pay-lines – 20 or 50 – but if you’re a fan of nine-line games, you could probably do worse. One downside about this game is that it contains no scatter symbols, which typically lead to free spins. Be that as it may, the inclusion of risk and bonus games keeps things moderately interesting.